Co-location and business-specific issues in the internationalisation of SMEs. Their impact on the growth and on the international performance of Born Global Firms.

After a decade of both empirical and theoretical contributions on born global firms some questions about the drivers of born global attitude are only partially explored. In particular the relationship between international entrepreneurship and location is still missing deep analysis both from an empirical and from a theoretical viewpoint, while better known is its relationship with business-specific issues, with special emphasis on niche orientation. Integrating business-specific and location-specific issues is the aim of this paper, in order to provide a more complete - though not yet exhaustive - framework about the drivers of a born global orientation. The empirical survey on 271 Italian SMEs supports the criticism about internationalisation as a gradual and sequential process, as far as export activity is concerned. The existence of a serial internationalisation path is grounded on business- and location-specific factors, with the former more capable of explaining intensity and the latter exercising a stronger influence on precocity and geographic scope. The outcomes about the adoption of entry modes other than export reveal that Johanson-Vahlne model confirms its validity particularly in the relevance of learning from foreign market experience and building a progressive commitment in terms of alliances and international agreements.